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I have been single for a very long time now. Only a year and nine months this time around, so you might say it hasn’t been all that long, but I think of it as kind of…cumulative singlehood over the years. I started dating when I was eighteen. I’ve been in love, I’ve had my heart broken, and I’ve not jumped from one relationship into another. So yes, there have been enough days and months and years of built-up singlehood for me to think of myself as perpetually single.

And it’s not a bad thing, this perpetual singlehood. It’s a bit solitary, but it is not empty. My life, without the comforts to be found in a relationship, is also free of the encumbrances of a relationship. And the fact of the matter is this: since no couple is perfect, neither is any romantic relationship. Which means there’s drama, there’s disappointment, there’s happiness, there’s joy. Pretty much the same emotions that you experience as a single girl too. I am lonely sometimes, but who isn’t? I read, I watch movies, I hang out with friends, I work, I travel, I spoil the people I love with gifts, I get laid a bit, I tweet a lot. It’s a good life…

I’ve been off TV for a while, so this little bundle of joy (NOT) has arrived in my life a little late. It’s the Patanjali Saundarya vs Aishwarya ad that’s been airing for the past month and a half that I’m talking about. It’s a straightforward ad if you want to sum it up in a sentence: ‘Girls, use the Patanjali Saundarya Swarn Kanti cream if you want flawless, pimple-free skin’. But the messaging of the ad as a package is just so mind-bendingly awful that you can’t really do justice to it (or to a lot of women) by doing that one-line summary. For this ad, you see, is also about the ‘Good’ Indian Girl vs the ‘Not-Good’ Indian Girl.

I should admit that I didn’t have high expectations of Kaabil when I went to watch it. The trailers gave away a bit too much of the plot, and the songs and promos hadn’t exactly inspired confidence. But I went because I didn’t want to judge the movie unfairly – considering that it’s been a while since Bollywood has featured differently abled characters as protagonists. But you know what, I should have just stayed home and spared myself a great deal of aggravation and outrage. Here’s my Kaabil review – in the form of how I felt as the movie progressed. Fair warning, though: this is full of spoilers…and might convince you to NOT watch the movie if you were planning to.

So 2016 has been surprisingly full of Bollywood movies for me. It’s not that I don’t watch them, but in the years since school, I’d lost the habit of going to the theatre to watch movies. That changed with a vengeance this year, when I found myself heading out every other weekend to watch something or the other. Some I loved, some I hated, some made me question my sanity since the filmmakers weren’t around for me to question theirs. So here’s my list of 2016 Bollywood movie reviews – 27 films in meme form, because, you know, that’s really what everything in life boils down to today!

(Full disclosure: this list includes a few movies that I couldn’t watch through to the end because I just couldn’t torture myself any longer!)

The Actresses Roundtable 2016 with Rajeev Masand is a must-watch for many reasons. As he speaks to Anushka Sharma, Vidya Balan, Alia Bhatt, Radhika Apte and Sonam Kapoor, our favourite actresses open up about many things – from how they feel shooting sex scenes to the way they see Bollywood, as an industry, change as they move to more and more powerful movies that don’t just have ‘token’ female characters. But perhaps the most poignant and heartbreaking moment of the interview – for me, at least – comes fairly early on in the interview, when Sonam says that most Indian women experience molestation in some form or the other and then goes on to describe what happened to her. It’s a story that we’re familiar with – either because we’ve experienced it ourselves, or know someone who has…

Hate them or love them, condoms are pretty indispensable if you’re a sexually active girl. Even though there are other forms of contraception available to prevent pregnancy, a condom is your best shot of staying safe from STDs. But if you’ve ever struggled or wondered how to put on a condom correctly, you’ve come to the right place! Though it is kind of difficult to describe, and you only get good at it with practice…let it not be said that we didn’t try our best to help you out!

It’s not often that a Bollywood celebrity opens up about being insecure about their body – or even if they do, it doesn’t always carry with it a note of sincerity. Let’s face it: it’s hard to place your faith in the words “I don’t care what people say about the way I look” or “I’m not ashamed of being curvy” when those words are accompanied by airbrushed “flawless” pictures of the celeb speaking them. But Sonam Kapoor’s piece for Buzzfeed, titled “I Didn’t Wake Up Like This” – it really is something that feels honest, genuine, heartfelt. Because she isn’t pretending that she doesn’t care – she’s being brutally honest about how much she does care. And therein lies the raw honesty, the power of her story – she gives voice to the millions of women who do worry about their bodies, about their looks, and struggle constantly to battle the demons of insecurity and feel good about themselves…